I tried to upgrade Mworks to v0.8dev (the one where you implemented the mouse pointer resetting) on the iMac I will be using for the actual experiment (until now I was testing it on my laptop and on my own very recent iMac). It turns out the iMac I will use is fairly old (OS 10.9.5), and Mworks 0.8dev is not supported (requires 10.10 or above). The issue is that the iMac is too old to be upgraded to the most recent OS (10.12, Sierra), and I cannot find a safe way to install an intermediate version of the OS (these versions are not available in the app store any more). Is there any chance you could release a version of Mworks that includes the mouse pointer resetting feature but is still supported on OS 10.9.5 (which was the case for Mworks up to v0.7)? That would save me a lot of trouble!
Thank you for your help
Nicolas
Hi Nicolas,
Is there any chance you could release a version of Mworks that includes the mouse pointer resetting feature but is still supported on OS 10.9.5?
Sorry, but I don’t do custom MWorks builds (for anyone), per the agreement of the labs who sponsor my position. If you want new features, you need to upgrade.
The issue is that the iMac is too old to be upgraded to the most recent OS (10.12, Sierra), and I cannot find a safe way to install an intermediate version of the OS (these versions are not available in the app store any more).
The old OS versions are still available via the Mac App Store to people (such as myself) who have downloaded them in the past using their Apple ID. I recommend installing the most recent version that supports your iMac.
If no one in your lab has access to them, you can bring me a USB stick (or other removable storage), and I can create a bootable installer on it.
Chris
Hi Chris,
It makes sense that you don’t do custom Mworks builds; sorry I asked. I did manage to find someone who had previously downloaded MacOS 10.11 (El Capitan) via their AppStore and was able to upgrade my iMac. I installed the latest version of Mworks (0.8dev), but now the issue is that every time I launch an experiment there is a flow of warnings “Skipped 1 display refresh cycles” that prints out on the server console. And the flow of warnings never ends until I stop the experiment. I assumed that the iMac was doing heavy stuff in the background (maybe due to the recent upgrading), so I checked Activity Monitor but nothing crazy seems to be going on (I attach a print screen of the Activity summary)… So I don’t really know why the computer is behaving like that. Do you think I should try to downgrade to Mac0S 10.10 (Yosemite)? Would that help in your opinion? Or should I simply give the iMAc some time (~few days) to optimize the system following the recent upgrade to El Capitan?
Thanks for your help,
Nicolas
Hi Nicolas,
Now the issue is that every time I launch an experiment there is a flow of warnings “Skipped 1 display refresh cycles” that prints out on the server console. And the flow of warnings never ends until I stop the experiment … Do you think I should try to downgrade to Mac0S 10.10 (Yosemite)? Would that help in your opinion? Or should I simply give the iMAc some time (~few days) to optimize the system following the recent upgrade to El Capitan?
I don’t think you need to give it more time. Skipped display refreshes indicate an overburdened GPU. I don’t think any post-install tasks would be particularly GPU intensive. (Maybe if you had a large photo library, and the OS was doing face/object detection on it. But presumably there is no photo library on this machine.)
The first thing I would try is rebooting. Once in a while, I see situations where the graphics stack gets in to some sort of bad state, and rebooting the machine clears things up.
If rebooting doesn’t help, then my guess is that the newer OS version just wants more GPU cycles than the old one. I don’t know if downgrading to Yosemite would help; I guess you could try.
Really, the best solution would be to switch to a newer model. Sierra supports iMacs from late 2009 and after, so your current machine is a minimum of 8 years old. That’s about double the service life I’d expect out of an iMac. Also, any Mac that supports Sierra will also support High Sierra (10.13), so you’ll get several years of service out of it, at a minimum.
Cheers,
Chris
Hi again Chris,
After further investigation, it appears that the “flow of warnings” only occurs when Mworks is in full screen/main display mode. When I use the mirror window with a size that exactly matches the size of my screen, I don’t get this constant skipping, although I do seem to get some skipping of 3-4 cycles from time to time (but pretty rare). Does that give you more insight in to what could cause my problem?
Nicolas
Hi Nicolas,
To recap our offline discussion: My best guess is that this is a graphics driver issue. Maybe it would be worthwhile to try Yosemite, in case the issue was introduced in El Capitan? Apart from that, I don’t think there’s much you can do about it, other than switch to a different machine.
Chris
I thought about downgrading to Yosemite, but it won’t let me install it now that I am on El Capitan…
If you create a bootable installer, you should be able to use it to downgrade.
Chris
Hey Chris,
I think reverting to Yosemite did the trick. I’ll check more thoroughly tomorrow, but my first attempts to run in full screen were successful. I guess there was some magic to it 
Thanks again,
Nicolas